Liberia’s lost generation: A Vancouver photographer reconstructs the country’s visual past

Jeff Topham, a freelance photographer, filmmaker and writer living in Vancouver, B.C., spent three years of his childhood in the West African country of Liberia. Recently, he and his brother, Andrew, returned to Liberia to make a documentary retracing their life there. While filming, they learned that 14 years of civil war had destroyed the visual history of the nation.

As a photographer, Topham understood that the loss of these archives means the loss of identity. To that end, he started a unique project, Liberia ’77, to give back to the country that had shaped his family memories so profoundly.